Prediction: at some point, failure to actively and completely participate in social networks will be considered a sign of subversive behavior that must be investigated, similar to using PGP email or Tor is today.

"The man at the end of the street doesn't talk to his neighbours much, because he likes to keep himself to himself. He pays with cash because he doesn't have a bank card, and he keeps his curtains closed because his house is on a bus route. It may mean nothing, but..."

The Advertising regulator banned these ads for being offensive as they were implying lawful activity was criminal:

"Guido Menzio, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, was working on a differential equation while waiting for the Syracuse-bound plane to take off from Philadelphia, the Washington Post reported. He had to present the findings of a working paper at Queen's University. But a passenger somehow mistook the equation for Arabic or some sort of Islamic code for a terrorist attack."

@switchingsocial@jerry@annika what I don't get is, how does anyone think that someone would be plotting a terrorist attack on paper on a plane next to someone who can clearly see what they are writing....(especially if she thought he was gonna attack the plane they were on, which... seriously? that'd be the worst prepared attack in the history of humanity)

@grainloom@switchingsocial@jerry@annika - Most people’s ideas of evil doing come from movies. You see the villian preparing for the attack, often speaking and writing in indecipherable languages, codes, and texts. Storywise, this paints the villian as an other, as something foreign and wrong. Folks see it in real life and freak out. Art imitating life imitating art.

@tinker@grainloom@switchingsocial@annika makes me wonder if real life bad guys are also influenced by movies and feel the need to create crazy diagrams and written plans, simply because that’s the expectation...

A nice example from #Disney is Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the toon "Phineas and Ferb".He is the only #hacker who actually want to change the world (for the worse, from the O.W.C.A. perspective).

Phineas and Ferb, despite being just as smart as him, are deeply integrated in the mainstream vision: each morning the world is just like the day before and they are fine with it.Ferb is the ideal #SV#engineer: he's smart and do what others want.

@annikaHe went to Eton and learned through observing them in the police in India then back home. England learned divide and rule in the colonies then took it home when the empire shrank to the countries and regions in The United Kingdom. That Thatcher's war with the working class coincided with the end of the decline of empire may be no coincidence. Divide and rule now means immigrants and non-conformists of all splintered stripes.@switchingsocial@jerry

@switchingsocial@annika@jerry creating a society where everyone is treated as a suspect and the most innocuous activity is viewed with suspicion. We’ve allowed individual liberty to be eroded too far and this is the inevitable consequence